The present invention relates generally to monitoring the vital signs of one or more patients, and more particularly to a system and method for monitoring patients via wireless communications.
Devices for measuring various physiological parameters, or xe2x80x9cvital signs,xe2x80x9d of a patient such as temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, heart activity, etc., have been a standard part of medical care for many years. Indeed, the vital signs of some patients (e.g., those undergoing relatively moderate to high levels of care) typically are measured on a substantially continuous basis to enable physicians, nurses and other health care providers to detect sudden changes in a patient""s condition and evaluate a patient""s condition over an extended period of time. However, since most hospitals and other medical facilities care for numerous patients assigned to numerous different rooms, it can be difficult for a finite number of clinicians to monitor multiple patients on a continuous basis. In an effort to alleviate this problem, some medical monitoring systems have been developed to enable the vital signs data collected from patients to be conveyed to a central location, thereby allowing one or a few clinicians to simultaneously monitor multiple patients in different locations. However, many of such prior systems have not allowed the monitored patients to move about the hospital. Although a few xe2x80x9cmobilexe2x80x9d monitoring systems have been attempted, such systems are difficult to use and prone to failure resulting in the loss of a patient""s vital signs data.
A wireless patient monitor is adapted to communicate with any one of plural medical telemetry networks, each having one or more central stations, where each network is configured to communicate via wireless communications using one of multiple different communications settings. The monitor includes one or more sensor inputs for receiving vital signs data from a patient, a wireless transceiver configured to transmit and receive wireless communications; and a controller coupled to receive the vital signs data via the one or more sensor inputs and to communicate with a network via the transceiver. The controller is configured, upon initial power-up, to automatically transmit a signal to a local one of the plural networks via the transceiver to request the communications settings used by the local network, and to establish communications with at least one of the central stations on the local network using the communications settings received from the local network without intervention from a user of the patient monitor.
Another version of the invention is a wireless, patient vital signs monitor adapted to communicate with a medical telemetry network having at least one central station. The monitor includes one or more sensor input ports for receiving patient vital signs data, a controller coupled to receive the vital signs data via the one or more input ports, and a wireless transceiver controllable by the controller to communicate with the at least one central station. The controller is configured, when not in communication with the at least one central station, to repeatedly attempt to establish communications with the at least one central station via the wireless transceiver. A display device is also included and is controllable by the controller to automatically display a notification to a user of the monitor upon establishing communications with the at least one central station.
Yet other versions of the invention include a wireless, patient vital signs monitor, a method of monitoring a patient and a wireless medical telemetry system. The advantages of the present invention will be understood more readily after a consideration of the drawings and the Detailed Description.